Cambridge shells out $30K a year for street and square dedications

Tuesday

Feb 26, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 26, 2008 at 10:48 AM

One of the city’s unofficial nicknames has not come cheap. In the “city of squares,” it costs taxpayers approximately $30,000 a year to dedicate squares and street corners to notable Cambridge citizens. That kind of money would be more than enough to buy an additional cruiser for the police department — they typically cost around $21,000 — or just about cover the base salary of a first-year teacher.

Matt Dunning

One of the city’s unofficial nicknames has not come cheap.

In the “city of squares,” it costs taxpayers approximately $30,000 a year to dedicate squares and street corners to notable Cambridge citizens. That kind of money would be more than enough to buy an additional cruiser for the police department — they typically cost around $21,000 — or just about cover the base salary of a first-year teacher.

The city averages about 45 dedications per year.

According to city records, each sign costs the city’s department of public works $468 to manufacture and another $197 to install, making the cost of a single dedication $667.

That cost also includes $150 in overtime pay for DPW workers assigned to the dedication ceremonies, which typically occur on the weekends.

The City Council ordered 45 dedications in fiscal 2007. Since the beginning of the new fiscal year — which began July 1 — there have been 20 new dedications ordered by the city council.

Last year, Councilor Marjorie Decker drew national attention by asking the city to dedicate the intersection of Pearl and Cottage streets to Ben Affleck, and the corner of Pearl and Auburn streets to Matt Damon.

During a City Council meeting in December, Councilor David Maher suggested one way of trimming the number of dedications might be to draw at least some of their funding from the City Council’s budget rather than the Department of Public Works.

“My feeling on a lot of this stuff is that if it was a small budget that came out of the [DPW] budget, and then after that the City Council would have to pay for it, you’d see the number of these things go down tremendously,” Maher said. “I think sometimes it does get a little bit out of hand.”

Councilor Craig Kelley, who had initially asked City Manager Bob Healy for the report on the cost of square dedications, argued that the city should look into the possibility of using trees instead of signs for square dedications. Healy said he wasn’t opposed to the idea, but there were “logistical issues to consider.